Disapointed that I couldn't launch last weekend due to the wind and threat of rain, I was really looking forward to launching this week after work and have my first experience with a standard size motor and parachute recovery.
Unfortunately, I seem to have gotten a head cold so I didn't try to launch yesterday. Today I stayed home sick...but I just couldn't get that Alpha III out of my head. Looking out the window an hour ago, I saw partly cloudy skies and little to no wind.
A launch or two wouldn't kill me.....so against my wife's better judgement, I gathered up my stuff and set off for the open field where I had my first launch on Friday. When I arrived, I was annoyed that the wind had picked up a bit, probably 10 mph. Actually, it probably didn't pick up, but an open field doesn't have all of the houses acting as wind blocks. Nevertheless, I decide to launch.
For the first flight of the Alpha III, I put in a conservative A8-3 motor instead of the B6-4 included with the kit. The launch was just as fun as the previous ones. While I've only been in the hobby for less than a week, I'd suspect that no one gets bored of the whoosh sound of motor ignition and liftoff.
Unlike last Friday's launches, I tried to pay close attention to what was going on during the flight. The first thing I noticed was that the Alpha III turned and flew into the wind, even though I had taken pains to make the launch rod vertical. (Is this windcocking?) The rocket's apogee was clearly apparent, and the ejection charge fired about 2 seconds after the rocket began its downward arc. The parachute deployment was nominal (a word I've picked up from my wife's NASA engineering colleagues). What
really surprised me was just how much the parachute slows a rocket's descent. Even though the wind was about the same as on Friday, the parachute allowed the Alpha to drift much father away from the pad than the Firestreak with its streamer.
When I retrieved the rocket I was happy to see that I had no recovery system damage and that I seemed to have placed the recovery wadding in correctly. Thinking about the wind, I toyed with cutting a hole in the chute but I had left my scissors at home.
I swapped out the spent A8-3 and replaced it with a B6-4. A few moments later the rocket was back on the pad. I also tilted the rod about 10 degrees into the wind to see if that would help (you'll learn it didn't). I had the presence of mind this time to use the stopwatch on my cell phone to time the flight.
Was the B6 motor ever different from the A8! The liftoff didn't seem that much faster, but it seemed that the rocket just kept accelerating. In fact,
I lost sight of the rocket! The Alpha III is quite distinctly colored (black tube and neon-orange nosecone and fins) and I was surprised, giddy, and extremely worried when I could not visually see nor hear any trace of the rocket for over two seconds! (Is this normal, or are my windy conditions destroying the effect of the tracking smoke?)
To my relief, it came back into view, tumbling end over end. A second after reaquiring it visually, the ejection charge fired and the parachute deployed, but the rocket kept its end-over-end tumble, which delayed the full parachute delployment for several seconds. Once the parachute fully deployed, the rocket rotated like a slowly spinning top as it slowly drifted to the ground.
And, oh did it drift! The wind just kept taking that rocket father and father away from me. I actually broke into a brisk jog (a dumb thing to do when you have a head cold) to follow it. It finally landed about 2/10s of a mile away (I measured the distance with my car's trip meter) on a concrete road. No damage. Total flight time: one minute, seven seconds.
My little jogging episode had left me quite winded, so given that and the wind, I decided not to try the C5 engine.
And there is my second launch report! Next time I'll try to remember to get a camera!
